Disrupting Uber • Hacker News Board

Re: Disrupting Uber

#101

Post by orblivion » Sun, Jul 31, 2016, 5:50 PM UTC

cyan_atrus wrote: post #70

eistrati wrote: post #6

It looks like post-Austin exit of Uber and Lyft, smart guys jumped on the opportunity to fill the gap. I really hope Arcade City will be able to provide sustainable & scalable solution! P. S. I have no affiliation with either Arcade City or Christopher David. Read about this effort here: http://www.vocativ.com/327333/a-world-without-uber-dispatche...

you're betting that a facebook group is a scalable solution? arcade city is a great example of unintended consequences -- instead of safer rides, austin's regulations led to consumers choosing a much riskier ridesharing option (no GPS tracking, no recourse when something goes wrong, no background checks at all , etc) http://www.bizjournals.com/austin/news/2016/06/21/austin-cra... http://countercurrentnews.com/2016/06…

> you're betting that a facebook group is a scalable solution?

As I understand, they had an experimental phone application. They took down support for it, and are building a next version.

Re: Disrupting Uber

#102

Post by Kalium » Sun, Jul 31, 2016, 5:52 PM UTC

svanderbleek wrote: post #98

Kalium wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's highly unlikely that a small, disorganized co-op is going to be efficient enough to take advantage of the situation and be able to out-compete Uber. That said, the reality is irrelevant here. Jacobin is the kind of magazine where economic reality is treated as a suggestion, to be discarded as is convenient.

That's how economic reality should be treated. Our own reality is primary. We will take back our lives. What Jacobin is working towards is admirable. We believe in progress, that a better way is possible, and that the current state of affairs is suboptimal. We should encourage alternative economic thinking.

I am in favor of encouraging plausible, workable economic thinking. Jacobin is better described as leftist fever-dreams with roughly that level of connection to any reality.

Could things work differently? Absolutely. Are they going to work differently because some hack gets off fantasizing about how in abstract theory, the services Uber performs could be better performed by a co-op that pays workers more? No.

All the co-ops I've encountered or dealt with fall into one of three categories:

* Non-functional, incapable of making decisions or delivering value.

* Functional but completely unscalable. May depend on bizarro local economic conditions or be in one of the few cities where people are willing to pay 30% extra for pizza because it's a co-op.

* Function, scalable, and does not operate much like a co-op at the level of service delivery. REI falls into this category.

Uber works because it's functional, scalable, and reliable. You can go to almost any major city in the US, boot up your Uber app, and reasonably expect to get decent service. It is, abstractly, possible for a co-op to do that. You and Jacobin are completely, totally, 100% correct on this point. Things could be different and better for the people who Jacobin has decided matter.

In fact, we all live in a framework where such a thing is possible! If only someone was brave enough to put their labor where their mouth is. Maybe the propagandists at Jacobin could... nah. They wouldn't go for that. They much prefer theory.

Re: Disrupting Uber

#103

Post by rgbrgb » Sun, Jul 31, 2016, 5:52 PM UTC

pfarnsworth wrote: post #63

Good luck with the co-op idea. The problem is that drivers feel like their services are worth a lot, and passengers simply don't believe it. The reason why Uber is a success is that they created new demand by dropping prices. Everyone I know, including myself, would never have taken an Uber as frequently as we do if the prices were as high as taxis. You can't replicate this unless you keep pushing prices down, and th…

> drivers feel like their services are worth a lot, and passengers simply don't believe it

That's an interesting issue. We see the same thing in real estate -- seller's think their homes are worth way more than anyone will pay for them. I think this is one of the reasons For Sale By Owner (skipping realtor fees) hasn't taken off yet in the US. The FSBO seller will price too high, the home will sit on market for a while and people will think there's something wrong with it so they'll stop considering it entirely. As an anecdote, someone approached us the other day wanting to sell their family home for ~$4M that would realistically fetch about half that based on recent comparable sales in the area. At our current scale we can talk him down from that ledge, but we'd really like that listing process to be self-service and online. Traditional agents will say you need a selling agent there to talk the seller down to a reasonable price but my gut says we could solve this with computers.

Re: Disrupting Uber

#104

Post by flylib » Sun, Jul 31, 2016, 5:53 PM UTC

Frondo wrote: post #25

corin_ wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That view doesn't look at the big picture - it's very possible that they are allowing for, and happy with, losing money to grow market share for many more years, maybe even until they can offer driverless rides to turn market share into profit.

Waiting for driverless cars to make them profitable seems like one of the worst bets you could make. Even if they were content to wait, say, 20 years, when driverless cars hit the market, what's to stop anyone from buying a small fleet of them and tossing their own uber-like app up on the store? Heck, I can even see it in the distant future, turnkey Uber-like businesses, you get your choice of franchise to buy into.…

good luck finding any competitor willing to sell you a small fleet of them and let you launch a competing service, not only that they are the ones in control so if you launch a competing service with them, they could disable your cars.

Uber, Apple and Google have all taken the approach that they will rely on their own autonomous systems retrofitted onto existing cars or potentially build new cars instead of relying on anything the existing car companies make, otherwise it makes no sense for any of them to be investing billions of dollars into research if they think they can just go to Ford/GM/Tesla/etc. in 2020 and buy enough cars to launch a fleet service.

Re: Disrupting Uber

#105

Post by davidf18 » Sun, Jul 31, 2016, 6:00 PM UTC

valhalla wrote: post #93

davidf18 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These "barriers to entry" is called "economic rent". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_rent Economic rents are harmful to the economy and keep new labor entrants out as you have pointed out making it harder for young people or others to get a job. A way to complete with Uber and existing taxi services is to provide greener vehicles such as electric or hybrid (the new yellow taxi medallion cabs in NYC are all hyb…

I disagree completely. Uber's inception/success was partly because of existing taxi services' "barriers to entry". Medallions were worth about $1 million each when Uber started in NYC ( http://bloom.bg/2aCEeQA ). That's a textbook case of an economic rent. Taxi service was often discriminatory in NYC and other cities: taxi drivers often refuse to pick up black passengers assuming they won't pay once they reach their…

>> I disagree completely. Uber's inception/success was partly because of existing taxi services' "barriers to entry". Medallions were worth about $1 million each when Uber started in NYC (http://bloom.bg/2aCEeQA). That's a textbook case of an economic rent.

I live in NYC and if you look at my other posts to this article, you'll see I made the point that before Uber/Lyft the medallions went for $1.2 million.

Still, Uber/Lyft are way, way too expensive compared with other cities in USA and this is from the "legacy pricing" from the pre-Uber/Lyft days. Also, the "surge" pricing is really annoying and makes it Uber/Lyft far more expensive than taxis (they have the Arro app). I've had surge pricing on a Saturday morning! Hardly rush hour when it is raining! (I didn't use it).

>> Besides Uber's barriers to entry are it's scale (low prices and reliable service)

Uber does not have low prices in NYC. In other cities I've used it they are lower, eps. Uber-pool when it is available. Don't take my word for it. Check the Uber prices of NYC vs. Chicago or other large cities. NYC is about twice as expensive.

Re: Disrupting Uber

#106

Post by paulddraper » Sun, Jul 31, 2016, 6:02 PM UTC

thrill wrote: post #67

paulddraper wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does Uber have substantially more hidden costs than, say, a pizza delivery driver.

Nobody looks twice at the car the pizza is delivered in. Pick up a few riders in a car that smells like pizza, and you'll no longer be an Uber driver.

So keeping a clean car is one of the hidden expenses?

Re: Disrupting Uber

#107

Post by Callmenorm » Sun, Jul 31, 2016, 6:03 PM UTC

Uber is trying to keep prices low by removing the driver in the medium term. Any driver-owned service is going to have a hard time competing with that. There are less than 10 years of human driven transportation in urban settings. Still time to make a living, but not a career.

Re: Disrupting Uber

#108

Post by moflome » Sun, Jul 31, 2016, 6:04 PM UTC

Hi, we have found our "peer-to-peer ride share app" to be surprising popular[0]... in a different era, this was called carpooling. Which theoretically could disrupt Uber with "free" rides, but the article's premise seems to be on disruption through disintermediated profit sharing. Our app seems to indicate, at least in suburban areas, profit motive isn't the only driver in this market.

[0] http://www.snapridesapp.com/

Re: Disrupting Uber

#109

Post by toomuchtodo » Sun, Jul 31, 2016, 6:05 PM UTC

bobcostas55 wrote: post #23

skybrian wrote: post #16

What they're missing is that higher wages depend on some barrier to entry (there are many kinds) that protects the people who have jobs at the expense of anyone who is looking for a job. As someone who works for a company with high hiring standards and correspondingly high pay, I have mixed feelings about this. It seems like there should be some jobs that are easy to get without much training, and taxi driver is a go…

>that protects the people who have jobs at the expense of anyone who is looking for a job. And also at the expense of the customers.

Workers making a living wage is more important than customers receiving a service at little cost.

Re: Disrupting Uber

#110

Post by davidf18 » Sun, Jul 31, 2016, 6:05 PM UTC

tanderson92 wrote: post #75

davidf18 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they create their own app, they would have to offer lower prices than Uber which they'll be able to do from the money Uber was taking from them. Otherwise, people will use the incumbent service (Uber/Lyft). Is that easy to understand?

This is simply false. Assuming that Uber is profitable (this is not clear) then costs to riders could be lowered and drivers could be paid more, simply by splitting the profits going to Uber between these two ends. That's what a co-op is designed to do. I didn't downvote you, but if I had it would have been because you applied the standard arguments about Uber/Lyft without considering the specific argument here: that…

>> except that any profits go to the drivers instead of Travis Kalanick's pocket.

This is the comment I was responding to.

If the drivers provide a services at sufficient lower costs than Uber (something easy to do in NYC at least) then they won't have to worry about Uber.